Buying a mountain bike - a beginners’ guide

Cycling as a sport, activity and an exercise offers huge aerobic and anaerobic rewards. Ride a bike for an hour and try naming a muscle group that wasn’t asked to contribute to the effort. Cycling offers an all-round training package without stressing the joints in the way running or racquet sports can. This is because pedaling is a rotational force, as opposed to the impact your heel receives when striking the ground with all your weight multiplied by your momentum. Indeed, cycling’s only peer in this complete-but-impact-free world of workouts is swimming.

If you fancy throwing a leg over the most popular style of cycle – mountain bikes (aka MTB or ATB) – and are looking to purchase your first, then you’ll be joining swathes of people keen on buying a versatile workhorse. Mountain bikes can be used as great fun off road or adapted (with slick tyres and mudguards, etc.) for a commuting life on the high streets of Britain. Either way, you’ll be well armed with some basics outlined here.

Generally speaking

Firstly, and most obviously, the basic law of procurement holds true and is worth reiterating: you get what you pay for. Secondly, the founding premise of mountain bikes is in their robust design. Heavy duty frames are accompanied by 26” diameter wheels (rather than 27” on road/drop handlebar bikes) with chunky tyres for gripping mud and handlebars are of the straight(ish) variety. Meanwhile an abundance of gears are waiting obediently to attack gradients your neighbour’s Jack Russell would be scared of.

However, calling a cycle a ‘mountain bike’, does not a mountain bike make. This can infuriate parents whose teenage angel has given their £150 Falcon more of a challenge than Randolph Fiennes would think fair of his Land Rover. No, for something to handle riding up, across, over and down a mountain, it needs to be well built. That means, generally speaking, spending £250 or more. The cost fundamental says the more you pay, the less the machine will weigh (making it easier to pedal) and the more reliable it will become thanks to better components. Component categories can be broken down to: frame, fork, gears, brakes and wheels.

Frame

Frames are either full suspension (aka dual suspension) or rigid (aka hardtail). Full suspension can be seen to house springs and the like somewhere under the saddle, toward the rear of the frame. In theory, they make the bike more comfortable and efficient through increased control. However, they take a lot more engineering development (i.e. expense) and require more metal (increasing weight). Hence, the ‘£109 Full Suspension Bargain’ at your local petrol garage weighs a ton and is as much use in the kitchen as it is on the mountain. It’s best to avoid them under £500 or so and concentrate on a rigid frame instead – you’ll receive less gimmickry but get far more bang for your buck.

Rigid frames on bikes £250+ are almost exclusively built of aluminium. The tubes tend to look more like Coke cans than old-school Raleighs but they’re strong enough for anything you could throw at them and not as heavy as they look. Upping your spend will see you get butted tubing which is a thinning process that saves weight without jeopardising strength. Ladies specific models are available in colours other than pink (traditionally overused to say the least) and in far more modern styles than step-through frames.

Fork

If you’ve not bought a bike since the 90s, then this is the area which may well have seen the most improvement from your last purchase. As with all trickle down technology, what was yesteryear’s expensive upgrade is now an inexpensive standard fitment. It’s rare to find a mountain bike costing £200+ that doesn’t have suspension forks fitted, and with good reason. Suspension forks greatly help relieve the fatigue of riding over non-smooth surfaces.

Off-road riding means the bike will be constantly jumping around. This leads to the tyres being pushed up towards you and dropping back again. Therefore, your arms are being asked to compress and extend under your weight, as your forearms and triceps get the good news. A suspension fork is adding a spring to the front of the bike to aid that compression and impact. This means you can increase your speed without shaking so many fillings loose and ride further without thinking you’ve been arm wrestling 50 Cent all weekend.

Gears

The gear market is split into two goliaths: Shimano and SRAM. Choosing either is comparable to getting Jenson Button or Damon Hill to chauffeur for you – either will be superb. Both Shimano and SRAM have a hierarchy or family tree; the higher the level of gearing in the family tree, the more you’ll spend and the lighter it will be.

Generally speaking bikes are made of a mixture of component levels which peek at the rear derailleur (aka rear mech). Consumers are often fooled into thinking the whole of the gearing components (aka group set) are of such a high level. Chances are they aren’t and the manufacturer has scaled down the quality in the less visible areas to balance their cost, but this isn’t something to necessarily worry about. However, it does make comparing bikes like for like a bit more difficult as own branded parts can get added to the mix.

Brakes

Again the brake world is dissected in two: disc or v-brake. V-brakes are the new ‘standard’ on the vast majority of mountain bikes. Shimano paved the way here by squeezing masses of power from a fairly standard traditional brake block. Manufacturers don’t tend to want to pay Shimano’s premium prices, so they opt for cheaper facsimiles instead. As long as the calipers (piece that connects the brake block to frame/fork) are not made from cheap flexible plastic, the system should be fine.

Generally speaking, the more powerful brake type is a disc brake – although some top end v-brakes are extremely powerful. However, disc brakes’ best sales pitch is that they’re waterproof. Yep, riding with discs on a wet Sunday morning means you can still pull a lever and actually stop, not just squeak along waiting for the brake block and rim to dry out. Disc brakes come in two varieties themselves: cable or hydraulic. Cable discs are the poorer cousin of hydraulics and can be rather flexible (not a good thing) when fitted on bikes as standard under £300. However, hydraulics really are the business as they are incredibly reliable and efficient. It’s the same system found on motor bikes and cars, need I say more.

Wheels

Pro-athletes are still debating rotation wheel weights and the frictional impact of tyre displacement. Good advice is to leave them to it and carry on riding. All rims should be aluminium, even at this entry level, which means they’ll be lighter and last longer.

A simple thing to look for is quick release hubs. These are levers that allow you to loosen your wheels without needing spanners – very handy when you’ve a puncture on the trail or need to squeeze your new steed into the back of your hatchback. The only negative is they are also easy for thieving little buggers to walk off with if you’ve only locked your bike up by its frame, not the frame and wheels. So be careful.

To close

If the gym is your thing, then great. But if you’re looking to order a smile with your fitness then try exercising alfresco on a mountain bike. The air will revitalise your lungs and the all over workout is a no brainer. Happy riding.